Negotiate a New Car Price Effectively Consumer

¶ … Negotiate a New Car Price Effectively

Consumer Reports is one of the nation's most trusted sources for consumer advocacy, including information about the appropriate prices to pay for both used and new items. One of the most stressful purchasing experiences for many Americans is car buying. This makes sense because even the savviest consumer is inexperienced at car sales compared to car salespeople, who engage in negotiations for car sales on a daily basis (Kiley, 2013). Consumer Reports has drafted an article, How to Negotiate a New Car Price Effectively: Do Your Homework Before You Go to the Dealership, which aims to help place consumers in a competitive position in their negotiations with car dealerships.

I enjoyed that the article took an adversarial approach to dealerships. It is critical for people in the car buying process to realize that they have different goals from the dealerships. While both dealerships and buyers want a car sale to take place, the dealership's goal is to maximize profit, which means maximizing price. The buyer's goal is to minimize price. For many buyers, this translates into the monthly payment. However, the article warns customers to negotiate the price separately from the financing discussion because a focus on the monthly payment allows a salesperson to "lump the whole process together, including the price for the new vehicle, the trade-in, and financing, if appropriate" (Consumer Reports, 2014).

I also appreciated the fact that the article told consumers to do their research and indicated sources for that research. Their suggested source was Consumer Reports. That might appear self-serving, especially given that their new car buying guidelines are not free but must either accompany a subscription or be purchased. However, given my background knowledge about Consumer Reports as a source, I am comfortable with that suggestion. In fact, I think that the article should have gone further and explained why Consumer Reports is a trusted information source, since it does not take advertisements and is not influenced, then, by advertising dollars in the way that some consumer websites or magazines might be influenced.

Furthermore, I appreciate that the article avoided some oversimplifications one might find in other similar articles, such as "be ready to walk out" (Sharifi, 2013). The Consumer Reports article prepares the car buyer for the possibility that he or she will need to leave a dealership without completing a transaction, and even suggests that buyers be ready to do so in many different circumstances. However, it also cautions buyers against leaving a dealership without making a purchase if there is something unique or difficult-to-acquire about the vehicle in question and the dealership has already been willing to meet the purchaser's desired price (Consumer Reports, 2014).